I'm doing research for my instructor if any one can halp I would appreate it. Why do the Gups Green Brown & Red HAve colored trim on their dobohk? Does it mean something? If you have any thoughts please let me know
Hmmm...never thought about it :) We permit students to trim their uniform in whatever color their belt is. So a yellow or blue belt can trim it in Yellow or conversely blue and so on.
No one ever trims the uniform in Yellow which for us is right after white, simply because you will not be a yellow belt for long.
Brown Belt, and Red Belt however, each level has a minimum time in grade of a year in our system. IE 4th Brown 6 mos, 3rd Brown 6 mos, and the same for 2nd and 1st Red, these are minimums. So a student will be a Brown or Red Belt for quite some time, making it worth the expense of trimming the uniforms. Green really for us is the first time it is practical as you will be a green belt in our system usually for about 6 mos minimum, figuring there is 6th Green minimum 3 mos, and 5th Green Minimum 3 mos, and typically our students spend slightly more than 6 mos at green.
Every other belt prior to 5th we have a different color (these are recent, when I started we had only White Blue Green Red Midnight Blue) now we have more belts than gups (by 1) but that is another story.
Anyway, from our standpoint the student has always been permitted to trim his or her uniform in whatever belt he or she is currently holding, it just is very impractical to do so for a belt that you will spend around 3 months holding.
If your research turns up something else, please share. I would be very interested to see if there is another reason or tradition which started it all. Just to be honest in 20 years as a black belt I have never really given this much thought beyond what I just stated. :)
On page 236 in GM Hwang Kee's Volume 2 itshows a martial arts uniform from the Ko Ku Ryu Dynasty, this could be where the trim idea came from. Why not trim on the orange belt though? probably the length of time you are in orange is so short? compared to green/red/midnightblue?